On 22nd February 2014, the Japan Foundation London and the Association of Japanese Language Teachers in Europe invited Waseda University Professor Yoshikazu Kawaguchi to conduct a Japanese Teacher Training workshop titled ‘Teaching contextualisation and personalisation of elementary grammar within GCSE Japanese’. Around 40 participants attended the workshop.

The theories of ‘contextualisation’ and ‘personalisation’ were presented, along with examples from Professor Kawaguchi’s classroom experiences. Afterwards, using GCSE-level syntax such as ‘koto ga aru’, and ‘~ni~ga aru’, the participants were invited to make a presentation utilising the concepts of contextualisation and personalisation, and were later given feedback from Professor Kawaguchi. By discussing these ideas with each other at the workshop, the participants got a better understanding of these two theories.

You can watch a video of the first part of the workshop lecture via the web address below.